Well Intrepid Ibex is out, and if you're a fan of Ubuntu you are probably champing at the bit to get your hardy install(s) up to the next release. Unfortunately, you're going to be competing on bandwidth with millions of others who want to do the same thing.
A clean install of Kubuntu requires just over 1 GB of packages to upgrade from Hardy to Intrepid, and dragging that much data across the cloud is just painful, I don't care how fast your ISP is. It's especially painful if you happen to have an apt-mirror server on your own LAN with a full copy of the Intrepid repository.
With Debian, of course, upgrading is just a matter of changing to the next release in /etc/apt/sources.list and doing aptitude dist-upgrade. With Ubuntu, that doesn't work out so cleanly (though I can attest that it does work if you're willing to hack around on it a bit). You have to use the do-release-upgrade script instead.
So enough pointless rambling, how do we get do-release-upgrade to recognize our local apt-mirror server? Do read on...
1. First, our apt-mirror needs to have Intrepid downloaded. I mirror all of ubuntu, ubuntu-backports, ubuntu-updates, and ubuntu-security on my server, with main, restricted, multiverse, and universe. You probably need Hardy on there as well, but if you've got a server like this you probably already do.
2. On your clients, if you've manually added your local server and it shows up in Synaptic as a "third party software" server, delete those entries. Close out of synaptic.
3. Open the file /usr/share/python-apt/templates/Ubuntu.mirrors. Add in the URL of your own apt-mirror server. I added mine under the US heading, but it probably doesn't matter. Make sure you use the full path to the root of the mirror (e.g. http://myserver.mydomain.foo/ubuntu/).
4. Now open Synaptic again. On the repositories dialog, click on the "download from" dropdown and select "other". You should get another dialog with a list of servers, and your server should be on this list now. Select it.
5. Make sure you have checked the boxes for the various sections of Ubuntu you want to receive (updates, security updates, etc).
Now, do-release-upgrade should recognize your lan server. That GB of files should download in no time!
Comments:
"I said, Hey! Hey! You! You! Get off of my net
Posted by Scott on 2008-10-30 18:33:12Hey! Hey! You! You! Get off of my net
Hey! Hey! You! You! Get off of my net
Don't hang around 'cause two's a net
On my net baby"
Adapted from "Get Off My Cloud", Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
So, are we replacing the net with the cloud these days? To me, when someone uses that term, it always sounds clueless despite how uber-web 2.0 it's supposed to be, whatever web 2.0 is.
Sure, why not. It's just one more word to use, another entry in the thesaurus for those of us who get bored using the same word over and over. The Eskimos have like 100 words for snow, and I'd say we use the inter-thingy more than they use snow.
Posted by Alan the mighty author of the article on 2008-10-30 19:04:27Just because I can:
cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud cloud.
HAHAHAHAHAH!
Big thanks for my co-workers !
Posted by zaouh on 2008-10-30 22:53:57For my it s too late I have done the debian not-cleany method.
Can I do something to repair my intrepid machine ?
THX
Zaouh -- hard to say off hand, in the past when I've done it that way I just keep dist-upgrading until it stops having packages to install. Then you keep your fingers crossed and reboot.
Posted by Alan the author on 2008-10-31 01:03:35After which, there's usually some miscellaneous oddness that can usually be fixed by reinstalling the affected packages.
It's more an art than a science at that point...
Hello, can you don(t show my email in my precedent post please.
Posted by zaouh on 2008-10-31 11:00:39In fact i have no problem with my dist-upgrade, I just want to have the benefice of the update-manager command.
I have tried your tips but nothing appears at 4 step, my server don t appear in the list
Thanks for all
ps; sorry for my poor english i'm french
Entering an email address is entirely optional on this comment form. Sorry if that's not clear, I'll try to fix that.
Posted by alan on 2008-10-31 20:14:11I can't say for sure why it's not showing up on the list. I do know that you have to completely close out of synaptic and restart it to make it re-read the list. Other than that, I couldn't say.
You should ask at the ubuntu forums, people can probably help you there.
The title of this post says it explains how to upgrade to 8.10 but only describes how to use a local server, assuming the files are already on that server. For someone who doesn't know how to upgrade, this is meaningless information. For someone who can use this information, they already know what they are doing. Please keep your post title accurate and don't assume you're reader already knows what you are talking about, because if they did, they won't need to read your post. Please be explicit with where you type commands - a system terminal, a serial terminal, a browser, a text file, etc. Context is all important when explaining things to others. Thanks!
Posted by SteveH on 2008-12-01 15:47:26Sorry steve, but you are wrong. The reason I posted this is because *I* couldn't find the information anywhere, and after I finally did my homework and figured it out I decided to share for people like me who know how to upgrade, but not how to take advantage of a local apt-mirror.
Posted by alan on 2008-12-13 05:44:46The kind of person who needs explicit commands and the usual handholding probably doesn't have a local apt-mirror.
Sorry, but I'm not going to give a tutorial on nano every time I tell someone to edit a config file. If people want that kind of hand-holding, they better give my blog a miss.